When East Helena High School’s third group of seniors graduates this Friday, a life-changing moment for students will spotlight a potent new source of local pride.
Since opening in 2020, the high school has emerged as an East Helena cornerstone, inspiring hope, bringing people together, and shaping how a tight-knit community sees itself.
“It’s been big for us,” said East Helena native Ryan Fetherston. “Now we have a source of identity.” To understand this perspective, we need to turn back the clock.
Residents named this place East Helena in 1888, not long after operations began at the massive smelting facility in the center of town. The smelter and its owner, ASARCo, soon came to define the city, providing job security and considerable financial support to the district.
When the smelter went bankrupt in 2001, a victim of economic change, more than 260 workers lost jobs and the community lost its beating heart. “It changed the town completely,” said East Helena native Rick Halverson, who worked as a night watchman at the industrial site after its closing. “We were a company town. Now we’re a bedroom community.”
Thousands attended the 2009 destruction of the smelter’s iconic brick stacks. “It was the 100-year change of East Helena,” said Public Works Director Kevin Ore.
A few years later, when current district superintendent Dan Rispens was principal of East Valley Middle school, he sold $1 stickers reading “WE ARE EAST HELENA” as part of a school fundraiser. Folks loved them and the school sold around 5,000 of the stickers.
“Those things really struck a chord. It’s like this pent up frustration and need for identity,” Rispens said. “It kind of reignited a feeling of community pride.”
That reignited feeling spurred talk of community independence and pride, which led to the idea that East Helena needed its own high school. The school board urged then-district superintendent Ron Whitmoyer to examine how East Helena, a K-8 district, could open a high school.
The state had recently blocked the creation of new K-12 districts. But starting in 2013, Whitmoyer and others led a campaign to change Montana law so East Helena could vote to establish a new high school. On the cover of House Bill 634, a grainy photo showed eight 2003 Helena High School graduates with black graduation caps that read “EH 4 Life.”
“East Helena is a proud community where parents rightfully believe that the school district can do as well if not better because we know and love our kids,” Whitmoyer argued in the bill, which finally passed in 2017.
East Helena became a K-12 district the next year after locals approved a $29.5 million bond that would significantly increase local property taxes and ultimately build East Helena High.
Set to mark five years of operations in August, East Helena High is already the state’s third largest class A high school. As in many Montana small towns, the school has quickly become a heart and hub of social activity, as parents and other residents regularly attend sporting events, band concerts, and more. In early May, the community came out with fervor to support the softball team when it clinched its first-ever trip to the state tournament.
“[The school] has raised the bar in terms of community identity and engagement among folks who have been here for 100 years, and those who have moved here in the last five years,” Rispens said.
Locals have embraced the school mascot as well. East Helena High adopted the Vigilante mascot as a nod to Montana’s history, when vigilante committees in Bannack, Virginia City and beyond enforced frontier justice in the gold rush era. East Helena High’s purple Vigilante, sporting a cowboy hat and face scarf, is nearly ubiquitous around town.
Two years ago, on homecoming morning, an East Helena High flag mysteriously appeared atop the ASARCo slag pile. Fetherston and a group of childhood friends—the self-named “Lead Heads,” in reference to the city’s lead smelting roots—had snuck in the night before and planted the flag.
The high school has inspired an East Helena rebirth, according to Fetherston, and the Vigilante logo is a new community symbol. Inspired by East Helena’s phone prefix, 227, the school adopted February 27 as 227 Day, on which students learn the town’s history and the sacrifices of earlier generations – a key element of East Helena’s character.
As East Helena High graduates walk on stage to accept their diplomas on May 30, they will do so as unofficial ambassadors of a growing town that has rebuilt itself through grit, determination, and a collective commitment to stability and rebirth.
“The resiliency and the strength the community has had is just unreal,” said school board chair Scott Walter. “It’s very inspiring.”